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Iron Pipe Maker Is Fined $8 Million for Violations

McWane Inc. had been found guilty on 30 counts of safety and environmental crimes at its plant in Phillipsburg, N.J.Credit
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

TRENTON — McWane Inc., a major manufacturer of cast iron water pipes, was fined $8 million on Friday for dozens of workplace safety and environmental crimes at its New Jersey plant, the culmination of a multistate series of federal prosecutions against the Alabama-based conglomerate that began in 2003.

The prosecutions of McWane represented one of the most significant federal crackdowns against workplace safety and environmental crimes of the last decade. The cases revealed a corporation that for years routinely lied to regulators, sometimes altering accident scenes, sometimes fabricating documents and sometimes bullying employees into giving false information to the authorities.

In the New Jersey case, the final one pending against McWane, a jury convicted the corporation and four of its managers in 2006 of repeatedly conspiring to deceive regulators at McWane’s foundry in Phillipsburg, N.J., the Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Company. In long-delayed hearings this week, Judge Mary L. Cooper of United States District Court sentenced the four Atlantic States managers to prison sentences ranging from 6 months to 70 months.

On Friday, it was McWane’s turn. The company faced a maximum fine of $15 million for its conviction on 30 counts.

Addressing Judge Cooper, McWane’s president, G. Ruffner Page, expressed regret for the McWane employees who had been injured or killed, and for the communities whose air and water were fouled by the company.

“This experience has been extremely painful for this company, and for me personally,” he said. “All of us are deeply sorry.”

Federal prosecutors, with investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the F.B.I., began investigating McWane in response to articles in The New York Times and a companion documentary on the PBS program “Frontline.” They described a Dickensian corporate culture that put production and profits ahead of all other considerations, including the well-being of its 6,000 employees, who toil in one of the nation’s most dangerous industries.

Mr. Page told Judge Cooper that the publicity and prosecutions prompted intense soul-searching among McWane’s senior executives. He said the company redoubled its efforts to improve its record, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on improvements, hiring dozens of new safety and environmental managers and, in time, replacing more than 90 percent of the company’s top management.

“We have to earn back our reputation,” he said. “We are a better company in every way as a result of the transformation we’ve been through.”

But Andrew D. Goldsmith, the federal prosecutor who led the McWane investigation, expressed skepticism that McWane had changed. He pointed out that many of the company’s reforms did not begin until after it became aware that it was the target of a multistate investigation. He also asserted that the corporation had tried to derail the prosecution by hiring politically connected former government officials.

“This is the true McWane philosophy,” he said, after ticking off a long list of crimes committed by McWane managers.

Judge Cooper, though, was plainly persuaded by McWane’s efforts. “It comes before the court,” she said, “with actions of reform, and it has instituted systems and attitudes and upgrades that were hard to accomplish.”

She also cited McWane as a source of blue-collar jobs in a hard-hit economy, and she took note of what many employees at Atlantic States said about working conditions today. “They say it’s not the same place,” she said.

But just in case, Judge Cooper placed McWane on four years probation and said she would appoint a monitor to ensure that the company makes every effort to comply with all regulations.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Iron Pipe Maker Is Fined $8 Million for Violations. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe